Janice Meredith eBook

Clowes set down the baskets. “That is all
I wished acknowledged,” he said. “I’ll
ask no more till ye have decided whether ye will be
true to the troth ye have just confessed, Janice.”
He opened the front door, and added as he passed out:
“When these supplies are exhausted, ye know where
more is to be had.”

XL
THE BATTLE FOR FOOD AND FORAGE

When Janice came to examine the contents of the baskets,
she was somewhat disappointed at the mess of pottage
for which she had half bartered herself. Though
every article the commissary had enumerated was to
be found, it was in meagre quantities, and the girl
was shrewd-witted enough to divine the giver’s
intention,—­that she should be quickly forced
again to appeal to him. Her mother’s requirements
and her own hunger, however, prevented dwelling on
the future, and scarcely had these been attended to,
when Mobray and Andre appeared, to inquire if her
immediate needs were supplied, and with a plan of
assistance.

“Miss Meredith,” said Mobray, “Captain
Andre and I have had assigned to us for quarters the
Franklin house down on Second Street; and he and I
have agreed that, if Mrs. Meredith can be moved, you
are to come and share it with us.”

“We ask it as a favour, which, if granted, will
make us the envy of the army,” remarked Andre.
“And it will, I trust, not be an entirely one-sided
benefit. The old fox’s den is more than
comfortable, Mobray and I have a couple of rankers
as servants, one of whom has more or less attached
to him a woman who cooks well enough to make even
the present ration eatable, and, lastly, though our
presence may be something of a handicap, yet in such
unsettled times one must tolerate the dogs if they
but keep out the wolves. Hang and whip as we
may, the men will plunder, and some in high office
are little better. Alone here, you are scarcely
safe, but with us you need have no fear.”

Janice attempted some objections, but her previous
helplessness and loneliness, as well as her recent
fright from the commissary, made them faint-hearted,
and it needed little urgence to win her consent to
the plan. Her mother approving, a surgeon and
an ambulance were secured, and before nightfall the
removal was safely accomplished.

When, after the first good night’s sleep she
had enjoyed since her mother sickened, the girl was
summoned to breakfast, she found that others had been
more wakeful. In the middle of the table was
a pail of milk, a pile of eggs, four unplucked fowls,
and two sucking pigs, arranged with some pretence
of ornament, with two officer’s sword-knots to
better the attempt at decoration, and the whole surmounted
by a placard reading: “Only the brave deserve
the fare.”

“Gaze, Miss Meredith!’, cried Andre, jubilantly.
“See the results of a valour of which you were
the inspiration! Marathon, Cressy, Fontenoy,
and Quebec pale before the march, the conflict, and
the retreat of last night, the glories of which would
ne’er be credited, even alas! were it not necessary
that they should ne’er be told.”